Friday, 11 December 2015

Just about ten years ago there died far from the hills, in
distant Dorset, a lonely old man whose name will be revered in Lakeland and in
many places scattered about the world so long as men come to climb the rocks
and walk the mountains. His name was Walter Parry Haskett-Smith, and when he
died, far from his friends, he was eighty-five years old. He was the 'father'
of British rock climbing, the pioneer of the very earliest routes on half a
dozen different Lakeland crags, and the man who first discovered and climbed
Napes Needle. Haskett-Smith first saw the Needle- a graceful pinnacle among the
Napes Ridges on the Wasdale face of Great Gable- on a windy, cloudy day in the
early 1880s. He has written: 'The outermost curtain of mist seemed to be drawn
aside, and one of the fitful gleams of sunshine fell on a slender pinnacle of
rock standing out against the background of cloud, without a sign of any other
rock near it and appearing to shoot up for about 200 to 300 feet.'

At that time nobody had ever examined the Napes Ridges — the
steep slopes of scree below them had kept explorers away and given the
impression that the whole crag was dangerously rotten.

But Haskett-Smith, the
young Oxford graduate and barrister,decided to track down the slender spire
and climb it if possible. At his first attempt he failed to locate it, but at
the second he found it but left its conquest to another day. Some years later
he was exploring on the mountain quite alone and decided to work his way down
from the summit to the ridge, now known as Needle Ridge, up which he had
climbed two years before. He had with him a long fell pole, which gave him some
trouble by continually dropping and jamming in cracks and crevices, but
eventually he got down to the gap behind the Needle and decided, as climbers
say, to 'have a look at it'. There was nobody about on the mountain to help if
he was to fall, and there were no mountain rescue teams in those distant days,
but without hesitation the young man began to work his way up the tall spire,
which seems to hang over Styhead.

At first he used for
his fingers and toes, a crack, which in those days was blocked with stones and
moss, and eventually he reached what is called the shoulder of the Needle and here
he could study the final problem. The summit of the Needle really consists of
two tremendous blocks, one perched on top of the other, but the young man had
no real means of knowing whether the top block was secure or whether, if pulled
on, it would overbalance and crash with its victim to the screen 100 feet
below. Today, of course, we all know it is safe, and if three climbers balance
on one side it can be gently rocked, but on this day seventy years ago only two
or three people had even seen the Needle and nobody had climbed it.

The young
man was also anxious to know whether the summit of the top block was reasonably
flat so that he could perch on it, in the event of his getting there. But, even
more important, he thought that a flat top would mean that the edges of the top
block would not be rounded and so would give him a good grip for his fingers.
He therefore cast about for two or three flat stones and threw these up in
turn, hoping that one would stay on top. At last one did so and he started up,
'feeling as small as a mouse climbing a millstone'.

He balanced himself
up onto the Mantelshelf, with the steep drop on his right, shuffled along a
horizontal crack, sidled round a comer, up the face on small holds and then,
reaching up for the top, clambered up to the summit and sat down on his tiny,
airy perch.

The summit of the Needle is a sloping oblong, only a few feet
across, and when you are sitting or standing up there it is easy to imagine
yourself very high above the world and almost sitting out in space. This sort of
perch is common enough in the Alps but very rare in Lakeland, and there is
nothing quite like the Needle anywhere else in the British Isles. People have
stood on their heads on top of the Needle, lit fires up there, shaved and done
a hundred and one other strange things, but Haskett-Smith just sat down,
admired the view —and wondered how on earth he was going to get down. Before he
began lowering himself down, he left his handkerchief jammed in a crevice for
all to see, and it must have been something of a relief and a moment of pride
to get down the top block safely and be able to look up at the bit of linen
fluttering in the breeze.

Since those days the Needle has been climbed thousands of
times by seven or eight different routes, it is photographed dozens of times
eve, week during the summer, and its shape is known in many parts of the world.
Small boys and girls have been hauled up it in fine weather, stunt climbs and record attempts have been made on it. It has
been filmed and televised, painted and sketched, but the Needle — although
nowadays regarded as a comparatively easy route — is still a climb of character
and a remarkable memorial to a very great man. On the fiftieth anniversary of
his first ascent of the Napes Needle, Hackett-Smith, then a man of
seventy-four, went up again, roped between Lord Chorley and the late Mr G.R.
Speaker. Many hundreds of people, sitting and standing on the rocks around,
watched the slow, careful ascent on Easter Sunday 1936, and when the old man
clambered onto the top of the most famous bit of rock in English climbing the
crowd below him gave a cheer.

Hackett-Smith had a reputation of never being at
a loss for words, and his gift for repartee did not fail him even on this
particularly important occasion. 'Tell us a story,' shouted someone from the
crowds below, and the old man seated on the spire a hundred feet above their
heads replied, in a flash: 'There is no other story. This is the top storey.'
This fine mountaineer had climbed in the Alps, Norway, the Pyrenees, North
Africa, the Balkans, the Rockies and the Andes, but it was on Lake District
climbing that he left his most permanent mark.

He was a man of strong personality a brilliant speaker and a man of wide reading and culture, but often eccentric in his habits and dress.At formal evening functions he would often appear, without the slightest embarrassment in the most careless array, while for outside excursions he would turn out, on the hottest days, in a long, heavy, check tailcoat fitted with huge outside pockets. Nobody can be claimed as the 'inventor' of British rock climbing, but this tattered Old Etonian, with his ragged moustache and a glint in his eye, probably came nearer than anybody else.

Men of his individuality are not so often seen today, and I
often regret that I never met him. He was little seen in the Lake District
after the first world war and some of the modern generation of young rock
climbers have perhaps never heard of him. But his name will be kept green by the
little climbed gully named after him, a couple of slim books on climbing, a few
articles and Napes Needle. In a way the finest memorial that anyone could have.

AH Griffin: First Published in the Lancashire Evening Post.February 1956.

Friday, 4 December 2015

At 18 minutes to 4 on the morning of Saturday July 4 1981,
Chris Bland and a couple of companions trotted through the darkness up to the
gates of Lorton church and stopped for a breather.It was the end of one of the
most remarkable fell runs ever accomplished, a pounding, punishing, week-long
slog all over the Lake District, the equivalent of a double-marathon a day for
seven consecutive days, only harder than that because Chris was running on the
roughest and steepest ground in England. It was typical of the man — and of the
sport — that no fuss was made. Chris went home to bed for a few hours. The
local papers gave a few column inches to the run. The national papers and other
media made no mention at all. They devoted their sports space to the antics of
a young American athlete who had spent the week shouting abuse at the Wimbledon
officials. Chris Bland's aim was to 'run Wainwright', to see how quickly he
could attain every summit mentioned in Alfred Wainwright's Pictorial Guide to
the Lakeland Fells. There are more than 200 such summits and the distances
between them add up to 337 miles and involve more than 110,000 feet of ascent.

The ground-rules were
simple. He would try to knock them off at the rate of one area, one guidebook,
a day. Since there are seven guidebooks, it would clearly be neater, and a bit
more of a challenge, to do them on consecutive days, so that the whole
Wainwright round might be completed in one week. Then he added one further
complication. Chris is a churchwarden of Borrowdale church and the church badly
needed re-roofing. So Chris was persuaded to make it a sponsored run, all
proceeds to go towards a new church roof, and in acknowledgement of this he
decided to start each day's run at a valley church and end the day at another.
In the best tradition of modern adventure sport, he set himself an outrageously
difficult target, then went to a lot of trouble to make it as easy as he could.
The routes for each day were worked out carefully. The help of friends and fellow
fell-runners was enlisted. They had to make themselves familiar with certain
routes or sections of routes. It would be their job to lead the way, to keep
Chris going and cheerful, and to carry all the gear.

Chris would travel
light, carrying nothing but himself. If the weather was hot, he would run in
shorts and a sweat shirt. In the event it was a cool dampish week and he was
mostly in his track suit. On his feet he wore a battered pair of running shoes.
He aimed to average 3-4 miles an hour, moving in spells of three hours or
so, then resting for 20-25 minutes. Each night he would be driven home for a
few hours sleep in his own bed in the house he built himself at Stonethwaite in
Borrowdale. He did not sleep a wink the night before the big run - he was too
nervous, he says. Too afraid of disappointing all the expectations he had
raised. He was up before 3 and at 4 minutes to 4 on the morning of Saturday,
June 27, he set off from Matterdale church with Chris Dodd. Half an hour later
they were on the first summit, Great Mell Fell. The game, as Sherlock Holmes
would have said, was afoot.

All went well the first day. All 35 summits in
Wainwright's Eastern Fells, including Helvellyn, were visited in a round of 55
miles and over 17,000 feet of up and down. Just before 8.30 p.m. the two
Chris's —Chris Dodd was with him all the way —reached Threlkeld church. It had
been a 16+ -hour day with four stops for rest and food. Day Two was very
different. Judging by the statistics, the Far Eastern Fells should have been
rather easier — not quite so far, not quite so much ascent as the day before.
Chris got another early start, at 4.35 a.m, but 12 hours later he was
struggling. 'I got into the wrong state of mind' he says, wasn't enjoying
myself. I kept thinking of the five days still to go. I couldn't see how I
could keep going that long'. When the week was over and he had kept going, he
came to the conclusion that his big mistake on the second day out was not
eating enough: `When you're burning up energy at that rate you have to keep
shovelling the fuel in. I soon got sick of chocolate and that sort of stuff but
found I'd a great appetite for tins of macaroni pudding and fruit salad.

After
the second day I ate tremendously. But on the second day I didn't and I ran out
of steam. If I'd rested another half hour and had a couple more tins of food,
I'm sure I'd have been able to complete the course' . Instead, he called it a
day just before 6 p.m, leaving nine summits un-visited.Psychologically, this
was the crunch moment of the week. He was feeling low, disappointed with
himself. There was no way now he could hope to do all the Wainwrights in the
week. But he decided to press on and do as much as he could. Next day, luckily,
was the easiest of the week, southwards along the Central Fells between Borrowdale
and Thirlmere, on to the Langdale Pikes, then down the declining ridge to
Rydal, a matter of 41 miles and a mere 12,000 feet of ascent. It was done in 13+hours and Chris recovered his spirits. Day 4, by contrast, was to be the most
challenging.Wainwright included in his Southern Fells the biggest area of all
and the highest mountains, from Coniston Old Man in the south, by way of
Bowfell and Glaramara and many intermediate high-points, then west to the
highest hills in England, Scafell Pike and Scafell — more than 60 miles altogether
and well over 20,000 vertical feet, for most of the way on steep and broken
ground.

The Coniston Fells. Painting-Delmar Harmood-Banner

And on the appointed day, June 30, a thick blanket of dank
mist covered all the ground above 1,800 feet, turning route-finding into a
nightmare task, making it dangerous to move at any speed. Pete Parkins was his
companion all that day. They ran into mist on Wetherlam and soon realised they
would have to abandon the bigger mountains further south, including Coniston
Old Man. They turned north hoping the mist would clear, but there was no wind
stirring and by the time they gained the summit of Great End in the late
afternoon it was plain that any attempt to reach all the remaining tops would
take them far into the night. In the interests of safety and sanity, Chris
decided to lose the Scafells and the summits further west and drop down instead
by way of Glaramara to his home church in Borrowdale.

It meant more summits
missed from the Wainwright canon, in terms of distance and height gained only
half the day's programme accomplished. Even so they had been on the go for
nearly 13 hours. The next two days were plain sailing. The Northern fells, just
under 50 miles, were knocked off in 14+ hours. Then the North-Western Fells,
nearly 47 miles and 15,000 feet, took just under 16 hours.

God rested from his labours on the seventh day but there was
no such relief for Chris Bland. The last day was also the hardest, more than 50
miles and more than 21,000 feet of ascent. At 7.55 a.m. on Friday, July 3, he
left Ennerdale to climb a little-known mountain called Grike. By mid-day he was
looking down on Wastwater from the summit of Buckbarrow, the southernmost of
the Western Fells. From there the route swung east-wards to take in the big
hills of the Mosedale Horseshoe via Scoat Fell, Steeple and Pillar. By
mid-afternoon he and his guides were on the stony summit of Great Gable. By
early evening they were high above the lake of Buttermere, with the long humpy
ridge stretching before them to the north-west and the setting sun. It was dusk
when they left Red Pike.

His companions for the final miles were Pete Parkins
and John Bulman and they escorted him carefully through the darkness along the
smaller summits at the end of the ridge, across the road at Loweswater, up Low
Fell and Fellbarrow, then down to the last valley to reach Lorton church with
just 14 minutes to spare before the week was up. In those seven days Chris
Bland had a climbed 192 mountains, run 310 miles, ascended and descended the
equivalent of 99,000 vertical feet — well over three times the height of
Mount Everest. And even though the last day was the longest, he found himself
going as well on the final slopes as he had on the first. In fact, he found he
got stronger as the strenuous days passed. He got heavier too, consuming so much
macaroni pudding and other tins of sustaining stodge that he put on three pounds during the week.

On the last couple of days he felt a little
soreness behind one knee and a touch of strain inside one thigh but they
were not serious and nothing else went wrong. Throughout the whole of his
massive marathon, moving at speed over broken ground that was often steep and often
slimy, he never slipped and does not remember ever even stumbling. When he a
got home each night he had a long soak in a hot bath, ate a big hot meal, then
slept for four hours or so. He is not
normally good atgetting up in the
mornings but he had no difficulty that week. Two thing about it give him special
pleasure. The first is that it earned him a word though not much more — of
praise from his sternest critic, his father.

The other is that all the complicated arrangements for meeting
guides and cars, picking up food and flasks, worked perfectly. Everyone and
everything was there on time and a lot of people turned up to give extra
unscheduled support. When you talk to him about the run, Chris spends most of
the time saying how marvellous all his helpers were, how he could not have done
it without them, how that should be emphasised rather than anything he did
himself. He was driven home on the Saturday morning and slept for a couple of
hours. Then he got up to go to Keswick to watch his daughter taking part in a
dancing display.

He raised something between
£4,000 and £5,000 by his run but not a penny for himself. He did not seek
publicity. And when it was all over his only words of criticism were levelled
at himself, that he failed on the second day because he ran out of
determination. He is not a natural athlete, 40 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall,
a compact 11-1/2 stone. He took to fell-running some 7 years ago when he found
himself sadly out of condition, nearly 14 stone and soon breathless. The sport
was just beginning to be popular in the valley so he and his younger brother
Anthony and their cousins, Stuart, Billy and David, all had a go. The other
four quickly showed great talent — Billy became the British champion — but
Chris found that he always came in, as he still does, well down the field. He
was fast enough uphill but could not hurl himself down steep slopes with the
kind of controlled abandon you need if you are to finish among the leaders.

He
carried on fell-running because he enjoyed it, he liked the easy camaraderie of
the sport, and it felt good to be fit again. And he gradually realised that
what he lacked in speed and agility, he made up for in physical stamina and —
more important — in mental powers of concentration and determination which
enabled him to go on and on and on again when most men, even the hardest of
them, would rather lie down quietly somewhere and die.

He does not give the
impression of a man with any compelling hang-ups. There does not seem to be
anything particular he feels he has to prove. But he has these qualities,
especially, as he cheerfully agrees, this kind of extreme 'bloody-mindedness' and
he likes to exercise them. Is he going to have another go at the Wainwright
round? `No', he says firmly, 'I'll find something else to try. I've set up a
target for better men to beat and my great hope is that the idea catches on and
that others come along and do better than me. They can try to beat my times for
the five days when I completed the round, or they can try to do the whole lot
in the week and see if they can include the tops I missed. I'll be glad to help
anyone who wants to have a go' . You get the feeling that Chris Bland is not
altogether sorry that he did not succeed completely, that he left room for
others to overtake him.

Saturday, 28 November 2015

I was waiting at Arthington Junction, near Leeds — a station
specially constructed to inculcate the virtue of patience, though it is
believed that the complaints of incensed passengers have done much to modify
its original useful purpose,when my eye was attracted by a singular clump of
timber standing out solitary and conspicuous on a bare hillside. A gentleman in
corduroys was near me on the platform, regaling the evening air with his views
on railway companies. Of him I inquired the name of those trees. 'Trees! Haw, haw!
Why that was Awmescliff Craag.' I was unacquainted with gritstone then, and
knew not its little ways. Of course, I had met it walking down the street, with
a man behind it bawling out 'Knives and scissors to grind!' and I had no idea
that it lived in mills and ground up corn and things; but I had never before
encountered it in its wild state on its native heath.

I did not then
suspect the facility with which it can simulate the appearance of the bosky
grove, nor had I the slightest idea of the amount of sport that Almes Cliff —
Great Almias Cliff of maps and guide-books — would someday afford me, or of the
quantity of clothes and skin I should leave thereon by way of compensation.
Gritstone may popularly be described as a glorified lump of petrified
sandstone. This great roughness allows of climbing methods which would be out
of the question on almost any other kind of rock. You can take liberties which
ordinary rock would resent; and for this reason gritstone is not goodpractice for a beginner. In other words if
the gritstone climbs were composed of rock of the Borrowdale or Snowdonian
series, half of them would not 'go', ie...would be impossible.

On the other hand,
gritstone has certain little peculiarities of its own. Without decency or
warning the roughness changes to an absolutely smooth bevel, of course entirely
to your disadvantage, affording no possibilities for either grip or friction.Or else the rock bulges out unexpectedly and knocks you backwards. Also, when
it comes on to rain, the surface is transmuted into a nasty, mossy, greasy
slime. Almes Cliff Crags give some of the finest gritstone climbing I know. In
appearance they are insignificant, two escarpments of grit, one below the
other, and neither more than sixty feet in altitude at the highest point. Sixty
feet! What is that? Men who get killed in the Alps do the thing in style and
tumble half a mile or so. All very well. Sixty feet is quite sufficient.

Anyone
who doubts this has only to step off the coping of his house on to the pavement
to be convinced. Happily this danger can only be obviated by sending round a
friend with a rope to the top of the cliff to play you up, and this should invariably
be done until you have assured yourself by frequent ascents that the climb is
well within your powers. I italicize these words, because the cliff is visited
by climbers of exceptional skill, and climbing of a somewhat desperate nature
is occasionally indulged in.

Onlookers who know
nothing of the game may be tempted to follow in their foot and hand holds (if
they can find them), and may hurt themselves. One of the best climb on Almes
Cliff is the Great Chimney on the High Man. It gives some fifty or sixty feet
of straightforward back-and- knee-work.The climber enters the chimney right
shoulder first, and with a little difficulty works his way up till his toes are
lodged in the lower crack. Then comes the tug of war. The next ten feet are
quite holdless and the roughness and angle of the crack something to the
climber's disadvantage. The body is firmly braced across the chimney by lateral
pressure of the arms, knees and feet, and is then lifted vertically a few
inches by a desperate wriggle. This is repeated several times, till the hands
can be reached into the upper crack, when it is usual to rest awhile. It is not
so easy to get the feet up to that crack as may appear at first sight. Closer
inspection will show the (proper) right wall just above it overhangs it considerably.

The finish of the climb, a long a, reach over a rounded edge, is not quite nice
in a high wind. Who was the first tailor? I don't mean Adam, with his fig
leaves, but the first man who took up tailoring commercially? Because I'm sure he invented gritstone. It plays
the dickens with ones clothes, especially when you back up. Once have I been
compelled to depart hurriedly to the nearest village to be, like a newly paid
bill,reseated. After my last day's scrambling there I pursued my homeward way
with my hands pensively clasped behind my back whenever I sighted anybody. The
climbing at Almes Cliff is almost inexhaustible. I could name half a hundred
problems right away, and some courses are of first class severity. I know of no
harder in climb in England than Parsons' Chimney. I have seen it done once, and
attempted it more than once, but, like Mr. OG Jones's friend, I do not like that 'infernal dangling'.

The Leaf Climb is quite a hard
little struggle. The left arm and knee are wedged between the jammed boulder
and the containing wall,and the body is levered up until the right knee and
arm can be thrown across. Then a comprehensive
wriggle brings the top of the stone within reach of the climber's left hand.

The Leaf can be passed easily on the climber's right, and
this course is to be preferred in heavy wind. There is a Stomach Traverse on
the famous Pillar Stone in Ennerdale, Cumberland, and there is a Stomach
Traverse on Almes Cliff. The Pillar Traverse is not very difficult, quite
reasonably safe though in emergency sensational. The difficulty consists in
hauling oneself about forty feet along a diagonal crack on the face of the
precipice; the safety lies in the fact that it is possible to wedge the left
arm and leg so firmly in the crack that it is something of a tussle to get them
out; the sensationalism arises from the fact that a considerable portion of
your frame is supported by some two thousand odd feet of the thinnest of thin
nothingness, with a nice, accommodating, and entirely finishing bump about
three hundred feet down to speed you on your short cut to the Liza Valley.

The
Almes Cliff Traverse is somewhat different. It is fairly safe — you cannot fall
more than 40ft; the sensationalism is to be found — easily — in the realisation
that you are quite likely to come off anywhere between the 4ft and the 40ft. And
the difficulty! There is no mistake about that. There are two points of attack
curiously resembling each other, yet differing as far as the right from the
left. The right shoulder attack :The right arm first, and afterwards the knee,
are wedged in a crack, and the body is then forced upwards by desperate
wrigglings aided by wild scrapings with the left foot (clearly shown by the
white scratches) until both hands can be reached to the top of a ledge to the
left of the climber. The left shoulder attack is very similar, except that the
arm has to be braced, elbow and palm and rather less vigour and a great deal
more delicate balance are required. On the ledge the climber generally lies on
his 'tummy'

This
position, however, is not the origin of the name of the climb. The next move is
to traverse laterally and upwards across the face of the cliff, with the
fingers in one horizontal crack and the toes in another. This would be
comparatively easy were it not that the rock between the cracks bulges out like
a typical alderman's corporation. The balance in places is nice enough, even
for a thin man. Whence the name of the climb. The bouldering at Almes cliff is
second to none. Ilkley would be another happy hunting ground were it not that
it is more frequented than the Almes Cliff district. There are one or two good
things on the Cow and the Calf, but the best of the scrambling is in the Valley
of Rocks. The Split Rocks Climb is not easy in itself, and is specially
valuable as instructive in the art of feeling at ease on a dangerous face. The
Crooked Crack is one of the stiffest little bits in broad Yorkshire; and there
are many others. Gritstone climbing is not mountaineering of course.

Nevertheless, much can be learnt. Balance, backing up, something of the
management of the rope something of the art of climbing with the least possible
fatigue, and all sorts of little things that go to make the complete climber.

Saturday, 21 November 2015

Nearly quarter of a century after his untimely death, at the
age of forty-eight, the climbing career of John Menlove Edwards, one of the
most curious in British climbing history, still exerts a compelling
fascination. As an innovator, he was the most prolific cragsman of the
thirties, pioneering at least ninety new climbs or variations. Not interested
in aesthetically pleasing lines, Edwards usually selected a less-popular cliff
and dissected it over a period of time, sometimes in the process producing
mediocre climbs on loose, vegetated rock — a factor seized upon by his critics-
but as posterity has shown,a pointer to the future. It is impossible to
divorce his traumatic and tortured life from his mountaineering activities, or
indeed, the remarkable feats of rowing, sailing or swimming in which J.M.E.
indulged at various times — each were an integral part of his complex make-up.
Towards the end of his life he considered himself a failure, yet he was a man
gifted with an array of talent. As a writer he has been described as having one
of the most exciting styles of prose-writing between the wars.

His poetry, original and deeply expressive and has received similar praise.He was a proven success as a clinical psychiatrist with a brilliant career ahead of him but it was enough for him and he entered the maze of experimental psychiatry, devoting many
years of study to the subject. Mainly because of the war, little progress was
made in the field of psychiatric medicine in this country and Edwards was
ploughing a lone furrow — the intensity of the work, the deprivation and
isolation he imposed upon himself, the inner conflicts of his suppressed
homosexual tendencies and the extreme social pressures which he was forced to
endure as a conscientious objector during the war years, all helped to erode
his resilience. Now in a weakened state, the total rejection of his theories by
his fellow psychiatrists, much of it in crude note form, was to him,
unacceptable — the tragedy was drawing to its inevitable end and after at least
two suicide attempts, Edwards had to suffer the mortifying experience of being
committed to Denbigh Mental Hospital where he underwent electric shock treatment.

It was to no avail and sometime later he gave up the battle for life before
darkness and despair submerged him completely. On the 2nd February, 1958, he
ended it all by swallowing potassium cyanide. Since his death two generations
of climbers have journeyed through British mountaineering and there is a danger
that the deeds of the great figures of the past, like Edwards, will be lost in
the passage of time — this would be a tragedy because the climbing world owes
him a debt that will probably never be fully realised.

Menlove Edwards was
born in 1910 at Crossens village, near Southport; he is remembered as a rather
shy and sensitive lad, who despite his already powerful build, was usually the
family peacemaker whenever his two elder brothers were involved in childish
squabbles. At the age of thirteen he won a scholarship to Fettes public school
where the lack of privacy and the astringent atmosphere were completely alien
to his retiring nature. He shone at sports and distinguished himself at
swimming, hockey and cricket. After winning the Begg Memorial Exhibition, he
disappointed his family by refusing the possibility of reading medicine at
Edinburgh University, choosing instead to enrol at Liverpool University where
he could be near his family, concerned about his father, who was forced to
retire through ill-health on a vicar's meagre pension. At Liverpool University
he was introduced to climbing by his brother, Hewlett—this was in 1929 and
his progress the next year was phenomenal!

In August, 1930, he pioneered Ochre
Slab on Lliwedd, followed a few months later by Route V on the East Wall of
Idwal Slabs and by the end of 1931 he was responsible for fourteen new climbs
in Snowdonia, the pick of these being Flying Buttress and Spiral Stairs on
Dinas Cromlech, the Girdle Traverse of Idwal East Wall and the Final Flake on
Glyder Fach. On the 29th August, 1931, he emphasised his arrival in British
climbing by becoming the first cragsman to lead Flake Crack, Scafell Central
Buttress, without aid at the chockstone and without prior inspection —Edwards
was only twenty at the time. He made the ascent in rubbers and later returned
to claim the first lead in nailed boots. In the same year, Edwards seconded Kirkus
when he pioneered the Chimney Route on Cloggy, and in 1933, Kirkus followed
J.M.E. up Nebuchadnezzar' s Crawl on Dinas Cromlech — the only two routes these
master climbers ever essayed jointly.

Edwards was arguably the finest climber
produced in this country before the war —although many may feel that Kirkus
should hold that distinction. Comparisons between them, hypothetical or not,
are bound to happen. Strength was the main characteristic of Edwards and his
leads of Flake Crack (HVS), Lliwedd Central Gully (HVS) and Brant and Slape
(VS) on Clogwyn y Grochan all typify this attribute (he was also quite capable
of leading courses of a delicate nature, i.e. Bow Shaped Slab, Shadow Wall, and
Western Slabs — all high standard routes in their day. In contrast, Kirkus
appeared to prefer the more delicate balance movement on open faces that
reached its highest expression with climbs the calibre of Mickledore Grooves on
the East Buttress of Scafell. J.M.E. was considered a safer mountaineer than
Kirkus, whose judgement at times was suspect, being involved in a series of
spectacular falls, the results of which would have probably had dire
consequences had it not been for the belaying expertise of A. B. Hargreaves.

Edwards was greatly affected by moods, and on an off-day,
has been known to fail on lowly climbs such as Hope on Idwal Slabs. He
safeguarded himself when soloing with a rope loop, probably putting it to the
test on a number of occasions — on the subject of falling his notes read: . . .
6-10 times, depending whether one counts. The longest about 40' .Others have
bettered that by a long way. 80'. C.F.K. [Kirkus] 200' on steep rock . ."
Writing of Edwards, Hargreaves has this to say:

But there is one thing
no one could say about him — and this is quite extraordinary considering the
enormous amount of climbing he did and the exceptional difficulty of much of it
— that he was prone to falling-off whilst leading. I do know that he once came
off that notoriously holdless place in the Cioch Gully, but I never heard of
him making a serious mistake which could have endangered his party." (He
also came adrift on Eliminate I on Helsby, where others have been killed, but
his sling method of protection stopped him hitting the ground.)

He led many of
the hardest routes of the day in nailed-boots. These included Longland's,
Great Slab and the Chimney on Cloggy; Belle Vue Bastion- Tryfan; Routes 1 and
2, Pillar Rock; Innominate Crack and Sepulchre, Kern Knotts; and Botterill's
Slab, Scafell. It was also on Botterill's Slab in pouring rain, three-quarters
of the way up, that he decided to proceed further would be stretching his
safety margin — he finished the climb on a top rope from a young Wilfred Noyce.
His enormous power was displayed to the full during the second ascent of Great
Slab, Clogwyn Du'r Arddu, in 1932. One of the team, a man of fifteen stones,
fell free of the face on the end of a 150 ft. line, with the diminutive Alan
Hargreaves the unfortunate anchor man. Edwards came down to the belay and
without any fuss grasped the rope with his hands and just lifted the dangling
climber until he made contact with the rock.

Such was his immense faith in his own ability, he would
literally climb with anyone, irrespective of their experience — on the first
ascent of Grey Slab, Glyder Fawr, he was partnered by a twelve year old boy by
the name of Frank Reade, who was instructed by Edwards to lean out from the
wall on the rope and walk up the 150 ft. pitch — with a little help from J.M.E.
He was not an enthusiastic club man, despite serving the Wayfarers' as
vice-president and being made an honorary member of the Climbers' Club — he did
not mix easily and it suited his temperament to climb with casual
acquaintances. Wilfred Noyce, a cousin of Colin Kirkus, who was one of the few
climbers to establish a regular climbing partnership with Edwards recalls his
first meeting with J.M.E. in 1934:

"As a boy of 17, I was staying at Helyg over the Easter
meet. On the Friday evening, while the others descended to Capel, I stayed in.
The only other person in the hut was a man in a tattered coat and seaman's jersey,
a man with powerful looking shoulders and a strange face, handsome in its way.The hair was auburn, almost woolly; he jaw firm and jutting, so as to force a hollow
between the full lips; the face smooth, rather childlike but for the eyes, which
were those of a man who had seen a great deal." He took Noyce to climb in
Llanberis Pass, where they sampled Long Tree Gate, one of JME.' s recent
discoveries on Clogwyn y Grochan. En route to the cliff Edwards conceded that
he never derived any pleasure in walking uphill for its own sake and that he enjoyed
the tranquillity of having a rock face to himself. Edwards believed that climbers
skilled in their trade could safely utilize loose rock and any vertical
vegetation that they may encounter — it was a revolutionary idea which opened
up cliffs that had been considered out of the question by the experts of the
past. Here is what he wrote in 1934:

Of Wales in
general what strikes one most is the large number of unclimbed faces still
staring down upon a pretty stiff-necked veneration. What is the fascination of
young climbers in the old Slabs and that still older face of Tryfan?

The dank,
brooding walls of the Devil's Kitchen were approached by Edwards in this way,
and of course, his pilgrimage on the three cliffs of Llanberis Pass. He was no
doubt considered eccentric and was subjected to a certain amount of leg-pulling
concerning his horticultural pursuits — nevertheless, he was responsible for it
least twenty-five pre-war routes in the Pass, paving the way for the climbing
mecca this area has since become. It was during the early thirties he became associated
with 'The British Mountaineering Journal' — the first commercial climbing magazine
to be produced in this country. He eventually became editor and although the journal
filled an important need in mountaineering literature, its appearance received
a mixed reception among senior climbing clubs.

Edwards, keenly aware about the lack of information on new
climbs, started a series of ' Guides to the British Hills' — the first areas
written by him and dealt with the East Wall of Idwal Slabs and Holly Tree Wall.
The advantage of a handy pull-out section for visiting climbers was obvious and
subsequently the Climbers' Club took over the Welsh Guides, with J.M.E. playing
a major role. And it was as a guide book writer that Edwards made his mark with
the general climbing world, devoting about seven years of his climbing life to
these works. In 1936 he compiled his Cwm Idwal Guide and to many pundits of the
time, it was the finest ever produced. He attempted to show not only technical
information, but the climber's state of mind and the whole cliff in relation to
the most prominent features. Kelly's Lakes guides were an economy of English, a
strong contrast to Menlove's literary style. Viewed across a gap of nearly fifty
years, some of his descriptions have not been bettered.

On the first pitch of
Belle Vue Bastion he writes, "Numerous scratches lead easily up and round
the main corner and on to and up a little subsidiary slab on the edge of all
things." Clogwyn-y-Geifr warrants this description, "It has every
natural advantage, being steep, composed of pretty rocky sort of rock and being
covered with vegetation: also parts of it have been long over-due for public
exploitation. It is the sort of place where one can feel the full glory of
stepping in perfect safety on someone else's considered opinion." Cwm
Idwal was quickly followed by the Tryfan Guide and in 1937 saw the start of
Lliwedd — it was two years in preparation and a perpetual battle against
adversity. Despite atrocious weather conditions, Edwards camped at the foot of
the mountain for a month before being washed out of his tent. Handicapped by a
lack of helpers who were willing to endure the rigours of an inhospitable
terrain and the standards imposed by J.M.E. Its publication in 1939 was the finale
of a monumental effort. During the early war years J.M.E. and John Barford were
co-authors of a provisional guide to Clogwyn Du'r Arddu using the controversial
continental system of grading routes — it is also interesting to note that
Menlove's only creation on Cloggy is Bow Shaped Slab which he climbed on the
20th September, 1942.

On the subject of big cliff mentality he related to
Noyce: Nobody, in these days, would climb without being certain of a good
jughandle hold at the end of it. All a question of habit and nerve training.
Soon we will be able to get over that, the leads will come longer and people
more able to stick around on small holds for a long time without worrying. The
top part of the Pinnacle on Du'r would be climbed. It wanted the right leader,
that was all.

It was a prophetic
statement which Joe Brown and others were to fulfill many years later. Before
the recent upsurge of tolerance and enlightenment, the bigoted prejudices
society held against homosexuality in the thirties must have been a constant
source of deep anxiety to Edwards and a major contribution to his agonising
decline. Few knew of his social impediment. It became general knowledge with
the publication of his biographical study after his death. It was during the
Winter of 1931 he rowed a boat from Arisaig to Skye in a storm — the first of
his many amazing aquatic exploits. In the Easter of that year he swam through
the Linn of the Dee in full spate. The Linn is a narrow gorge through which the
River Dee is compressed with considerable force, especially in the Spring, when
the winter snow is melting on the Cairngorms. Apart from some bruising he was
unhurt. Not long afterwards he spent sixteen hours alone in a collapsible
canoe, paddling from the Isle of Man to the Cumberland coast — an incident
which was given wide coverage in a local newspaper. In 1935 he persuaded Colin
Kirkus to join him in an attempt to row across the Irish Sea — it became an
epic as the pair spent many hours battling against heavy seas and a freezing
gale before Edwards amitted defeat and returned to Conwy, only to be swamped by
a wave under the jetty.

Several months later
he hired a fishing smack and left Fraserburgh to sail to Norway — it was to be
his most enterprising project to date. He took six weeks' supply of food but
was convinced he could do it in three. After sailing through the night his boat
was spotted by a Scottish drifter, who went to investigate. It appeared that
his boat had a damaged rudder and was made less effective when the drifter
''accidentally" rammed it — Edwards was forced to return to port, much to his
disgust. Throughout the towing operation Edwards sat back in his boat and
refused to help in any way, suspicious that his friends, worried about the
perilous journey, had arranged the fortuitous meeting with the Scottish boat.
In January, 1936, he rowed across the Minch to the Isle of Harris. The outward journey
took him 28 hours before he reached at a deserted cove — he returned in 24
hours after spending 3 days on the island.

His last recorded
marine exploit took place in the summer of 1944 when he hired rowing boat at
Skye and crossed to the Isle Rhum, then over to Canna, spending 18 hours at sea
in poor visibility, being continuously buffeted by wind and rain. One pre-war
holiday found him systematically swimming across every large expanse of water
in the Lake District and in the early forties he developed an amazing technique
of using strong waves off the Cornish coast to lift him on to a cliff,
where-upon he would pick out a line to the top. Three commandos who were
watching tried to emulate this feat but were tragically drowned.

Apart from the obvious physical challenge to his exceptional
strength, why did he project himself into these situations of extreme danger,
forcing himself to endure hardship and acute discomfort in his obsessive
compulsion to come to terms with powerful volumes of water? After swimming the
Linn of the Dee, he wrote: " I have always been amazed at the strength of
water. But what stands out to me, in the Linn, is the sudden strong fragments of
feeling in me that answered that terrific command under water." As a
psychiatrist, he may well have been his own guinea pig as he subjected his mind
and body to the outer limits of fatigue and self-analysis. Edwards rarely made
an effort to reach a summit and displayed little liking for Alpine climbing,
but his potential as a mountaineer was beyond question. On a rare excursion to
Norway in 1937 he spent a week traversing a fjord, carrying all his equipment
on his back and at the age of thirty four he made the first solo-traverse of
the main Cuillin Ridge, including Blaven and Clach Glas. He had not been over
the ridge previous and all he carried in the way of sustenance was a packet of
sandwiches supplied by his landlady at Glen Brittle

He set off casually, had breakfast at 08.00 hours and no
drinks for 24 hours, spending 12 hours, 30 minutes on the actual ridge,
returning over the rough terrain from Garsbheinn to Glen Brittle in the dark.
He saw the war as civilisation gone mad and registered, on pacifist grounds, as
a conscientious objector. Imposed austerity meant the closing of his child
guidance clinic in the Liverpool area where he was consultant psychiatrist, and
where he did some of his finest work. It was a body blow to his professional
idealism! After a short period as a warden fire-watcher, he retired to North
Wales, taking up residence in Hafod Owen, a farm cottage he rented from Colin
Kirkus, assuming an almost reclusive existence as he committed his theories to
paper. These were grim lonely years for Edwards and it is generally thought
that this period was the beginning of the end and the onset of his mental
instability.

Colin Kirkus:Wayfarers Club

His brother-in-law, the famous Red Dean of Canterbury, and
many friends rallied round, offering help and encouragement when they realized
J.M.E.' s low state. With funds short he applied for a study grant which was
refused and in the September of 1942, Colin Kirkus, a navigator with the RAF,
was lost over Germany. For a time he worked at Tavistock Clinic and Great
Ormond Street, both posts of tremendous prestige, but he did not settle.
Paranoid tendencies were now deeply entrenched and he became hypercritical of
his seniors. Although his mind was impaired, his old power remained and he
resurfaced on rare occasions to pioneer several new routes. These include the
Central Gully of Clogwyn Y Grochan and a harder variation two years later in
1951, both of very severe standard. The Route of Knobs on Clogwyn Y Ddysgl in
1952, was another in the typical Edwards mould and rated at Hard Very Severe.
Incredibly, he graded neither of these routes above Mild Severe, contesting
that a climber of his age could not possibly lead above this standard — he was
only 42 years old at the time!

On the 26th June, 1957, J.M.E. made his last
visit to North Wales, returning to the Devil's Kitchen where he climbed a short
crack-line near the final chockstone which he dubbed The Waterfall Route. Eight
months later Edwards was dead. After the cremation his ashes were scattered by
his sister and brother-in-law on a Welsh hill-side, not far from Hafod Owen and
under the craggy shadow of Yr Wyddfa, the tomb.

Hafod Owen. Above which Menlove Edwards' mortal remains were scattered by his sister in 1958

And as we went
back home that night following the scratch marks over the rocks and through the
heather the evening cleared as it had cleared before and the view was still
fair to look upon, golden and with line upon line of hills through the sheen of
the air and with the sound of the hills.

From False Gods (Unfinished) by
J.M.E.

*Footnote Edwards documents his adventures during the
compilation of the Lliwedd Guide, in Up Against It', published in the
Wayfarers' Journal, circa 1939.

Featured post

To Hatch a Crow

Welcome to footless crow- Croeso i Bran di-droed

Footless Crow aims to provide the best in British outdoor writing in a unique 'blogazine' format. Offering new articles and republishing classic articles from the past which have been cherry picked from UK climbing/outdoor magazines and club journals. In this I am pleased to have received the support of many of the UK's top outdoor writers who see Footless Crow as a perfect medium to air unpublished works and see old works republished in a format which was inconceivable when they were first written!As a non commercial media,the blogazine acknowledges the contribution that publications like Loose Scree and The Angry Corrie have made in the world of mountain literature. Providing accessible quality writing through a low cost 'zine' format. Footless Crow hopes to emulate these publications by also providing content which is unashamedly traditional and celebrates the finest virtues of British mountaineering!

All published works and photographs have been fully approved by the authors who of course retain copyright. The usual rules and restrictions of copyright apply.Hope you enjoy the content which aims to provide a new extended article each week. If you have any comments or would like to contribute something which fits in with the 'Footless' concept then email me at ......

footless_crow@aol.co.uk

* Since late 2011, the site has changed from a structured weekly article based format to a less formal arrangement which will see climbing and occasionally,eco news,art features and reviews appearing alongside articles.

Bookmark and share

Subscribe To

1

2

Why 'Footless Crow' ?

Footless Crow is a seminal rock climb in the Lake District of Northern England. It was the creation of legendary British climber Pete Livesey-1943-1998. Livesey was one of the new breed of climbers who eschewed the traditional laid back, fags and booze, ethic prevalent at the time and instead pursued a rigid training regime designed to increase his physical and mental attributes to the extent that he could push British climbing to new technical standards. In effect he was one of the first UK rock athletes.Footless Crow was a breakthrough climb which at the time was the hardest climb in the Lakes at E5-6c (US 5-13a). Currently E6-6c due to a flake peeling off.First climbed as an aid route by 50's Lakes legend, Paul Ross and then called -The Great Buttress-. Livesey's much rehearsed test piece was finally led on the 19th April,1974 to the wide eyed astonishment of the UK climbing community. One well known climber was said to have hung up his climbing boots after witnessing the ascent !The name Footless Crow was a brilliant piece of imagination from Livesey who claimed that as there was almost nowhere on the route where he could rest he had to hop about like a footless crow.

So now you know.

In 1976 I saw Ron Fawcett, rock-master since the middle Seventies, on the second ascent of Footless Crow in Borrowdale, then the hardest climb in the Lake District – 190 feet of overhanging rock without a resting-place. When his second called up, ‘What’s it like?’ he answered, ‘An ’orrendous place – Ah’m scared out of me wits,’ as he leaned way back on his fingertips, relaxing as comfortably as a sloth under a branch.